


Brother

by SoDoRoses (FairyChess)



Series: LAOFT Extras [13]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Gen, I cannot believe that was already a tag, Nail Biting, Nightmares, Swearing, Thomas-centric, vague references to dead loved ones, who am i kidding the fucking spn fandom exists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 03:43:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19040452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairyChess/pseuds/SoDoRoses
Summary: She’d been so angry (where is my brother) and Thomas had been so scared (you always come back)Sometimes, it’s hard for him to remember the difference.Love and Other FairytalesVerse





	Brother

**Author's Note:**

> fill for this prompt by @justanotherpurplebutterfly over on tumblr:
> 
> "For laoft, will there ever be a bonding moment between Virgil and Thomas? Like, just the two of them?"
> 
> and combined with this one from @centrumlumina, also on tumblr:
> 
> "“In LAOFT, does Thomas have any residual trauma/issues after the events of the fic? 😈“
> 
> Some! one! hug! him!

**where is he where is he where where where took him away and I cant find him where is my brother-**

_Oh, god, Berry where are you, what if he doesn’t come back, I’ll never see him again, please, please let him come back he’s my best friend-_

**brother brother where are you she hid him she took him how dare she he was mine mine mine my brother my-**

_\- Berry, come back, please come back what am I gonna tell Mom and Dad, what am I gonna tell Patton and Roman, you have to come back I can’t do this without you **please** -_

**- _please_  please give him back where is he -**

_\- where’d you go, come back, please come back, BERRY -_

-  **Bruderspinne**  -

give-

 **him** -

_**BACK** _

“Thomas!  _Thomas!_   _BUG!”_

His eyes flew open, but he was blind and everything hurt like he’d been turned inside out and wrung like a dishrag and everything was burningburningburning and screamscreamscream-

“Shhh, Bug, Thomas, I’m right here, come on. It’s Berry, Thomas,”

Thomas’s vision cleared, and Logan’s face was hovering directly in front of him, and the sheer relief that flooded through him made Thomas instantly burst into tears.

“ _Thomas,_ ” said Logan softly, wrapping his arms around Thomas and rocking him, like they were little kids again, “Thomas, what happened? I- you were  _screaming-_ ”

“I couldn’t find you,” Thomas blurted hysterically, “I was looking and looking but I couldn’t find you anywhere-”

“I am right here,” said Logan reassuringly, “I have not left the bedroom all night,”

 _It wasn’t tonight_ , thought Thomas,  _I_ _t was years and years, so long,_ _I just kept looking and looking but I couldn’t-_

But the dream was becoming fuzzier and fuzzier the longer he was awake, and so was the burning sensation and the ringing of his ears. He was forgetting something, something important, because Berry was right here but there was something- something else, too-

“Where’s-?”

Logan waited.

“Where’s what?” he prompted after a moment.

“I don’t… I don’t remember,” said Thomas, and he didn’t understand why a lump was rising in his throat and his eyes were flooding with tears again, “I don’t remember, I can’t remember and everything  _hurt-_ ”

Logan shushed him, humming low in his throat, and then it clicked down another notch into that comforting, not-quite-human rumbling noise he sometimes made when he was sleepy or wasn’t paying close attention. It made Thomas relax by another degree, enough that his breathing evened out some, but the itch in the back of his mind didn’t abate.

“It was only a nightmare, Bug,” said Logan gently, “You were just dreaming,”

A nightmare, yeah. But unfortunately, Thomas got the feeling he hadn’t quite been dreaming.

* * *

It was… weird, when Logan brought  _all_  his boyfriends to picnics.

Not bad, per se – the Spider Prince  _had_  seemed pretty ominous, to be honest, the first time Thomas met him, but it had been tempered a bit by the smitten way he’d looked at the other three and hadn’t quite been able to hide.

And Thomas had quickly realized that Verge was usually only freaky on purpose, and when he did it on accident he almost always apologized for it immediately.

He actually apologized a  _lot_ , especially to Thomas, and theirs and Patton’s parents. Not so much Ms. Gage, who he snarked at in a very bizarre way that nonetheless made Thomas’s ears itch for some reason.

But he certainly wasn’t anything like the terrifying stories of his brother that had been circulating the town for decades..

(Not that Thomas was going to bring  _him_  up around the boyfriend squad. They’d given him only the cliff’s notes version of defeating the Serpent King and curing G- _Mrs. Fischer_  but Thomas wasn’t actually that naive, and he recognized  _sheer rage_  when he saw it.)

So no, not bad – Verge mostly just hovered around the edges of these things and didn’t talk to anyone but his partners, and only occasionally spooking the  _shit_  out of someone by being creepy fast under the guise of helping carry something.

As now, for example.

“Oh my goodness  _gracious-_  Verge!”

“Do you need help?” he said.

“No, I do not,” said Thomas, laughing for some reason, “I can handle some lawn chairs,”

“You dropped one,” said Verge dubiously.

“And I picked it back up, didn’t I?”

The fae did not look convinced.

Thomas rolled his eyes.

“Fine! Go ahead,”

Thomas tried not be put out that Verge took half the lawn chairs from him like he was carrying a six-pack of coke.

Thomas directed him, and the two of them got the chairs arranged in some semblance of a circle around the drum of the fire pit. More of an egg shape really, because Verge couldn’t sit too close comfortably and the smoke messed with Patton’s breathing.

“Ta-da!” said Thomas. Verge gave him that confused head tilt that frequently came with any slang that didn’t predate the 1920’s

“What language is that?”

“It’s not a language, it’s one of those, uh,” Thomas snapped a couple times “What are they called, words for sounds? Like  _ping_  and  _bang_ ,”

Verge still looked confused, and maybe a bit alarmed.

“I’ll ask Logan in a minute, he’ll probably remember,”

After a moment, Verge nodded, maybe a little wary.

He must have been pretty focused on Thomas because he didn’t notice Patton and Roman chasing each other through the chairs until Patton barreled right into his back.

Except Verge was standing right next to the fire pit, and when he startled he bumped into the drum – the steel drum, which was hot besides.

He hissed, but it sounded more irritated than pained, stepping back and lifting the leg of his pants to reveal a small shiny burn on his ankle.

“I’m so sorry!” said Patton, looking stricken.

“It’s fine,” said Verge, “Just- stings a bit, fuck,  _son of a whore,_ ”

Thomas spoke before he’d had a single moment to think about it.

“ _Bruderspinne, my parents are right there!_ ”

Verge’s eyes snapped to Thomas dizzyingly fast, and his gaze made Thomas feel like a fox in a trap. Patton, next to him, looked distinctly alarmed and not a bit confused.

“Uh, Thomas?” he said warily, “Since when do you speak- was that  _German_?”

The thought  _Since forever,_  overlapped with  _I don’t, what are you talking about?_  Which was about the moment Thomas’s ears caught up with his mouth and suddenly Thomas wanted to run for the hills or possibly bury himself alive, he wasn’t real picky at the moment.

Verge hadn’t moved an inch, his eyes still boring into the side of Thomas’s head, and Thomas should probably take advantage of his seeming kinda stunned because he definitely wasn’t going to be able to outrun him otherwise but- well suddenly, Thomas really did  _not_  feel so great.

The space in his chest was on fire, not breathless but  _burning_ , like his insides were charring where he stood, and the blackandredfireblood memories he’d buried for weeks were suddenly bubbling back up like boiling oil, and he needed Berry or his mom or dad  _right now_  or he was definitely going to flip he needed his brother he need to find him because he’d  _lost him, how do you misplace an entire brother you idiot you should have tried harder but she’d hidden him and-_

Thomas’s head was killing him – a cold hand closed around his upper arm, briefly grounding, and Thomas thought absently that the pain was at least partially because he’d grabbed a hold of his own hair. He focused on the hand, which had to be his brother from the temperature, and tried to tune back into the noise around him.

“-if you can. I’m going to count, alright? One, two-”

He didn’t need to count he needed to find his brother right now but nobody was listening, nobody would answer, _where is-?_

Stop, stop,  _stop_  why was she so  _relentless_ _,_ like a wine-stain that just  _would not_  come out-

“ _Bug,”_

Thomas snapped back to clarity like someone had poured ice water down his back.

He was on his knees in the grass, curled over his own legs. Logan was kneeling in front of him, his whole face twisted with worry and his hands set on Thomas’s shoulders.

Patton and Roman hovered behind Logan, clearly fretting, and Thomas could feel Dad’s arm around Thomas’s upper back and his soothing voice humming a little song.

But there was one more point of contact- a cool hand, fingers looped around his arm. Thomas couldn’t decide if he was more embarrassed or terrified.

Because yeah, the Spider Prince was pretty chill, for an immortal who could probably turn Thomas into a dandelion if he got too irritated, but Thomas somehow didn’t think “chill” extended to calling him by the nickname exclusively used by his  _dead sister_.

“I gotta go inside,” he croaked, and he somehow managed to extract himself from the knot of people and bolt for the back porch before anybody could protest.

As he sprinted up the steps to his room, it did occur to him briefly that if Verge had really not wanted Thomas to leave, there wouldn’t have been anything Thomas could have done to get away.

* * *

Thomas had every electronic device in his room turned on, as well as the air conditioner and two fans blasting. He had one thumbnail being worried between his teeth, which was a nasty habit but Thomas was more worried about not being swallowed by the memories of the  _eldritch abomination_  in his head at the moment.

He immediately felt bad. Mrs. Fischer couldn’t help how messed up she’d gotten in the past fifty-odd years of being a ghost – she hadn’t been a  _monster_.

But – but she’d certainly  _felt_ like one when she’d been rattling around Thomas’s skull, screeching in a fire and brimstone rage.

And now she was gone, but she’d left weird shadows and imprints all through his brain, footsteps and sense memories that weren’t his, and always in the back of his head the sense that he’d lost something  _desperately_  important. It usually only felt better when he had Logan in his direct line of sight.

Logan or-

Didn’t matter.

The was a knock at the door, and Thomas snapped before he could stop himself.

“I  _really_  don’t wanna talk about it, Berry, if you could please just keep your boyfriend from killing me and then we can never talk about this again that’d be just great,”

There was a long pause, and then the door clicked open.

The person in the doorway was  _not_ , in fact, Logan, and burying himself alive was quickly becoming Thomas’s most fervent dream.

“Always with the killing,” Verge muttered, “Everyone thinks I’m gonna kill them, you’re all so  _dramatic_ ,”

Thomas made a completely incomprehensible noise.

They stood awkwardly across the room. Verge rubbed the back of his neck.

“Really,” he said, “Why do you think I’m going to kill you?”

Thomas barely restrained himself from chewing his nails again.

“It’s not mine,” he blurted, “It’s hers and I don’t- we’re not,”

He couldn’t seem to articulate what he meant.

“It’s not  _mine_ ,” he repeated.

Verge looked both uncomfortable and forlorn. He cleared his throat.

“It, uh – it wasn’t really hers the first time either,”

Thomas blinked.

“She was making fun of me,” Verge explained, “It was a joke about- about me being a monk with a vow of silence, because I wasn’t talking quite enough for her standards,”

He snorted, looking a little far away.

“‘Brother Spider,’” said Verge, “It was a joke,”

Thomas hesitated.

“Why are you… telling me this?”

“I’m trying to-” Verge huffed, considering.

“It was weird,” said Verge bluntly, “But honestly, I think- I’d much rather get used to hearing someone else say it than never hear it again,”

He smiled a bit.

“And if it’s too weird for  _you_ , just Virgil’s fine, too,”

Thomas smiled back hesitantly.

“But really,” said Virgil, shrugging, “There’s definitely worse brothers,  _trust me,_ ”

Thomas joked.

“Wow, Virgil, you’re already tryna marry my brother?”

Virgil turned scarlet.

“ _What_ , I-  _no_ , that’s not-”

“So you  _don’t_  wanna marry my brother?”

“You are an  _ass_ , why did I think this was a good idea?”

“No clue,” said Thomas brightly, “But no take-backs,”

“I’m familiar with the concept,” said Virgil dryly, “Are you going to come back outside now? Logan’s having fits. And I’m  _really_  not going to kill you, so just- calm down,”

“Very comforting!” Thomas said, perky and sarcastic.

“ _Ass_ ,”

“Can’t get rid of me now,”

Virgil actually seemed pretty content with that. And honestly? Thomas was, too.

**Author's Note:**

> you can also find me at [ tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors ](%E2%80%9Dtulipscomeinallsortsofcolors.tumblr.com%E2%80%9D) over on tumblr!


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